Firework I: The Lyric



Blue Fireworks by Neurovelho



First, I was inspired by the lyrics to this song.  Then, I noticed it climb Billboard to the number one position.  Finally, Firework got me thinking about French history, the Catechism, Fr. Dehon, and the Sacred Heart.  No, really.

The first job of Fr. Dehon was at St. Quentin.  Not the prison, but the town in northern France.  At the time, roughly 140 years ago, the town was in the throws of the industrial revolution, textile factories.  The work day:  12 hours (minimum), seven days a week.  (Children would get a break, and only have to work half a shift.  They got to start full-time at about age 15, and they often did;  their family needed the cash.  Pensions, worker's comp, health insurance:  nope, nada, uh-uh.  If you were crushed by the textile machines, the factory didn't even offer to help bury your body.  Don't even start to think about equal pay for equal work.  Life was pretty dismal.  On the plus side, there were plenty of bars and brothels in town to provide, uhm, distractions of all sorts.  Conditions were pretty much the same throughout the industrialized Western world.

What on earth does this have to do with going boom, boom, boom, like a firework or the firework-like heavy base beat to this song?  Right about this time, Pope Leo 13 had enough of how workers were being treated, and decided the Church should break its silence.  (By the way:  the Church was silent and very worried that any talk of worker's and/or human rights would appear similar to some words by a guy named Marx.)  Anyway, Pope Leo asked Fr. Dehon, personally, to preach his encyclicals (fancy word for letter) about the rights of workers.  Their words were a boom that caught attention.

Basically, the Church began to hear the screams and preach that people were not meant to drift through the wind like a discarded plastic bag.  Their lives shouldn't be a house of cards, human lives should not get buried six feet under the needs of the marketplace.  Their needs and interests are important.  Their families and relationships are important.  Their commitments to neighbor, community, and God are important. 

Why?  For the first time in response to industrialization, she began to articulate principles of justice and speak out.  People, each individual man, woman, and child, are not things.  A person is someone.  People are capable of knowing and loving themselves and freely entering into relationship with others, and into relationship with God.  The dignity and worth of the human person isn't in some generic qualities we all have, it is in the unique qualities each person has as a creation of God.  We have some something unique to offer that nobody else can.  Though these principals are certainly not exclusive to Catholics, I'm paraphrasing Number 357 of the Catholic Catechism here, not the lyrics to the song.  It can be difficult to tell the difference.

Fr. Dehon's devotion to the Sacred Heart picked up on that last part.  Simply put, God wants us to live in a world where we can respond by being that unique person, by offering our unique self back to God and to neighbor.  That person, that response, is meant to light up the sky.  That is the firework the Creator intended and loves to see.

Or, in better words:

           ...there's still a chance for you...
          'Cause there's a spark in you.
          'Cause baby, you're a firework
          Come on, show 'em what you're worth.

(Next Tuesday:  Firework II.)